The United States equestrian team are on their way to Paris, and one write up from The Associated Press about their journey to the Olympic games included a detail that is frankly mind-blowing: Horses need passports.
Did you know Olympic horses need passports?
Olympic horses need passports, but all they really want are oats
Photo by MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
While it’s true that most traveling pets in the European Union require a “passport,” this is a loose generalization for carrying vaccination documentation and health records. If you want to bring a dog on the plane, cool — it’s not like they’re going to verify the identity of the dog. Horses, on the other hand, are a whole other thing.
A horse passport contains a photo of the horse so customs and immigration can verify it’s the correct horse.
“Like humans, horses have passport controls to check that they are the right horse. Paperwork, such as vaccines and blood tests, is also checked for each horse.”
This raises a lot more questions than it answers. If we’re to assume that horses are the only animals that require identity checks then ... what the heck did the horses do? Forget declassifying Area 51 or the moon landing — I want to know what happened in recent history that caused governments around the world to be like “we’ve got to start watching these horses more closely.”
- Do regular TSA check the horse identities or are there experts?
- Is there a horse no fly list?
- Have two donkeys ever worn a giant trench coat and tried to get through security by pretending they’re a horse?
- Is there evidence of a clandestine equine liberation army posing a global threat to international security because they plan to overthrow governments and seize the means for oat production?
By extension, does this make the Olympics the greatest opportunity for international horses to meet, plot, and scheme against their human overlords? The simple factoid of horse passports opens a frankly alarming can of worms that I don’t think we’re ready to discuss.
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